You wouldn't go to a Bill Charlap gig expecting to hear the jazz world turned upside down. The axiom that jazz is about the player and not the repertoire can sometimes be harder to demonstrate when the luggage of the mainstream repertoire is as heavy as it is with him. But the New Yorker brings a casual and reticent charm and a compellingly fragile fluency to his handling of some of the most exhaustively-mined keyboard materials in jazz.
On his opening night, Charlap and his musicians initially seemed to be teetering on the edge of the soporific, as is always the risk with an undemonstrative, lounge-piano manner, but the initial caution was soon thrown to the music's winds. From This Moment On exhibited Charlap's easy grace, but the group sounded tentative. Harold Arlen's I've Got the World on a String suggested a general loosening of collars, and Vivvie's Waltz (an original written for the pianist's daughter), with its mix of an emphatic lower-register riff and a feathery, diaphanous principal melody, was positively impulsive.
Charlap's dynamic sense is very subtle and his touch remarkably gentle even at speed, so his double-time lines on this piece soon began to exhibit the mercurial mobility and sparkle that have made him so much in demand with celebrated leaders.
A trademark of his is the deceptively suspended ending, and several of his pieces concluded with devious codas, suddenly preoccupied arpeggios, and dangling silences abruptly resolved in a single theatrically-struck chord.
Charlap's local partners played at first as if anxious not to crowd the leader, and young bassist Mark Hodgson suggested a poise and security all over the register that was only made frustrating by his modesty with the volume control. Drummer Stephen Keogh, reserved at first, eventually hurled himself into a delightful display of uptempo hustling with the brushes on Five Brothers - a bebop sprint Charlap had borrowed from a recording with the late Gerry Mulligan. It triggered the pianist into a surging display of seamless runs and Red Garland-like block chords that ought to have sounded frantic but were as relaxed as a leisurely stroll.
Charlap's unassuming persona added considerable warmth. He even name-checked his high-school piano teacher Jack Riley and gave a thoughtful exposition of a wistful, entirely creditable Riley composition. By the time they got to Dave Frishberg's mixed-tempo Love Rolls On, everyone sounded as if they'd been enjoying this kind of musical conversation for years.
• Last performance tonight. Box office: 020-7439 8722.
